Buzzsprout Conversations
Welcome to Buzzsprout Conversations, the show where we dive into the real-life stories of podcasters in the middle of their podcasting journey.
You'll hear stories from famous podcasters as well as everyday podcasters, just like you, share stories about how podcasting has impacted them and the things they've learned.
Buzzsprout Conversations
Courtney Fretwell: Turning a Passion for True Crime into a Podcasting Career
Buzzsprout podcaster Courtney Fretwell shares her journey of leaving her job in criminal justice to pursue podcasting full-time.
Listen to Courtney's Podcast, "Forensic Tales"
Links from this interview:
Subscribe to Buzzsprout Conversations on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.
Do you know somebody we should interview on Buzzzsprout Conversations? Reach out on Twitter.
Being so passionate about the cases and the stories that I'm talking about also keeps me motivated. It's so much easier to stay motivated and to keep to a consistent schedule when you're passionate about what you're talking about. ["courtney Fretwell"].
Speaker 2:Hi everybody. Today I have Courtney Fretwell. She is the host of Forensic Tales. It's a weekly podcast about forensic science and it's just a really awesome true crime podcast. And we connected over email talking about monetization, going full time with your podcast, and so I'm really excited to bring her onto the podcast. Courtney, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited.
Speaker 2:So could you walk us through a little bit of your history and what brought you to being a podcaster?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've been a podcast listener for several years. Podcasts really came into my life when I got into actually endurance sports running marathons and doing Iron Man's and I just got kind of sick of listening to music on replay and jumped into listening to podcasts. I've always been a huge true crime fan, so I kind of gravitated towards the true crime genre and, yeah, started listening to podcasts during training runs and long training rides and after a couple years of listening I decided, hey, why can't I start my own show and start my own podcast In an area, of course, which is just true crime and forensic science my number one passion. So, yeah, that's kind of how it got started.
Speaker 2:And do you actually have a background in forensic science? That's what you went to school for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do so. I've got a master's degree from Arizona State University in forensic psychology, so I have a background in studying violent crimes, mass shootings, death penalty and prior to being a podcast host, I also worked in our local criminal justice system here.
Speaker 2:So tell me, how did you make this transition to getting into podcasting? A lot of people start I also listen to a ton of podcasts on runs and you start listening to podcasts and you really enjoy it, and then you start thinking, well, what if I want to be on the other side of the mic? How did you make that transition?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think I made that transition when I was listening to shows and I thought, wow, this episode would be really great or the show would be really great if they incorporated this aspect into their show. And again, for me it was mostly true crime shows and I thought, gosh, it'd be cool if they could discuss the psychology behind that offender or that victim. And for me it was like, ok, if I got on the other side of the mic and had my own show. I wanted to bring those elements that I thought other shows did it differently and I thought I thought it'd be really great if I could cover different aspects to a case.
Speaker 2:I love it, and so was there a moment that you decided I'm ready to do it. I'm ready to jump in. Did you have any hesitation doing it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it's natural to have some hesitation about putting yourself out there to have your voice heard, and I think it's definitely scary to be vulnerable and to put your creativity out there. So I definitely in the beginning had my moments of self-doubt, but I really relied on getting support from my fiancee and really close friends and family. That told me no, you can do this, you can be on the other side of the mic, you can let your voice be heard. So once you get over that initial fear, it's worth it.
Speaker 2:I read a profile about you where you told a story of how Tony, I think, is your fiancee's name kind of pushed you over the edge to starting the podcast. Would you share that with us, because I loved it. It was just like incredibly kind.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had talked about starting my own podcast probably for months and I think he just eventually, in the most loving way possible, kind of got sick of hearing me talk about OK, you want to start this true crime podcast, when are you going to launch it? And he really was the catapult in the beginning. He signed me up for a podcast kind of startup course that really laid out all of the foundation to get me started from 0 to 100. And he bought it for me as a Christmas present and said hey, here you go, we're starting this podcast.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. So when did you first start your podcast? In January 2020?.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes.
Speaker 2:And pretty quickly you decide to kind of take it a little bit deeper. Do you want to tell the story of just kind of transitioning from being a part-time podcaster to taking it full time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Forensic Tales launched in January of 2020. And it was at a time where I was juggling doing the weekly podcast and then also juggling my full-time career at the court, which is difficult to balance all of that, of course. I made the transition in July of 2020. I decided to leave my full-time job at the court and pursue podcasting full-time, so that was about seven, eight months into after the show had launched, and since then I'm still podcasting full-time and it's probably the best decision I've ever made.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. I love it. So you've switched full-time. What does it look like now when you're full-time podcasting? So you have a full week and you have a weekly show? What does it look like as you prepare research, edit, do the whole process?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my weekly routine since going full-time podcasting has completely changed. You're used to going into an eight to five job where it's a little bit easier to be structured in a job like that, but when you're on your own full-time podcasting, you really, from the beginning, have to be very structured, and that all comes from yourself determining. Ok Mondays, these are my tasks. Tuesday I've got to get next week's episode uploaded to Bus Sprout by Wednesday I've got to be creating my social media post. So that really is so, so important to my success that I've created a schedule that keeps me on track and then also accounts for life and counts for my personal life. So that's very, very important.
Speaker 2:How do you actually implement that structure? Because what I could see happening to me is, if I was my only boss and I was, the only requirement was getting an episode out. It'd be very easy to wake up at 10.30, decide I'm going to go for a run, maybe I'm not even sitting down till lunchtime, and then I'm going, I want to grab a bite to eat and it's 1pm before I've even really started on the podcast. You can totally see procrastination slipping in. How do you remain disciplined when really the main requirement is your own time and your own effort and what you think needs to go into every show?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's such a great point and I'm so glad you brought that up because, as a human myself, I know I made that mistake early on when I first jumped into podcasting full time of oh okay, I don't have to get up as early anymore, I can kind of take my time. But I think that quickly I found out that was not going to work. I think the first week, when you get to the end and you're like, oh my gosh, I still need to record Monday's episode and it's now Thursday afternoon. I think one time you go through that you realize, okay, I've got to set a schedule for myself. I'm the only one that's going to hold myself accountable. And I go back to why I'm doing this and I go back to my responsibilities as a podcast host. My audience expects a new episode every Monday and these are the things I need to do during the week to make sure that they don't miss an episode. And I don't miss an episode.
Speaker 2:You just touched on something really important when you said my audience expects an episode every Monday, so we often recommend for people to be releasing at least once a month or once a week on the same day of the week. Why is it important to you to release every Monday?
Speaker 1:For me, it's about consistency. So you know, since I launched back in January 2020, I released a new episode every Monday, so I've never skipped a week, even during Christmas, during the holidays right, I can prepare ahead of time and maybe batch a couple of my episodes so I can take time away and spend time with my family, but then I'm also not missing an episode. My listeners know that when they log on, they can have a new episode of Forensic Tales every single Monday.
Speaker 2:That's so great, and if anybody wants to learn more about how to take a break from your podcast without missing a week, I will link probably up here to a video that we just did about that so that you can go ahead and watch it. One thing that struck me as I read more about you and your podcast and everything you've done is you're in a very crowded space. A lot of times, when people say what's the most popular type of podcast, true Crime comes up, and there's tons of really, really well produced True Crime podcasts. You're going up against teams with dozens of people on the team and totally professional at everything being done by just a large group of people. How do you compete and how did you find your space in kind of a crowded category?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a great point. True Crime is very, very popular now and as a one woman show for the most part, it's definitely intimidating. It's intimidating to go into a genre of podcast that is very crowded. That is very pop culture right now and I think it's okay. I allowed myself to feel okay with being intimidated by a lot of the bigger shows out there, but I also learned a lot from them as a listener. I subscribed to a lot of the Big True Crime podcasts and I was listening for what they did, how they told their stories, what they included in their episodes, what they didn't include. So for me, once I got over being intimidated, I started looking at them and seeing what I liked, what they did, what I thought I could incorporate it to my show to make it unique and something different.
Speaker 2:One thing that kind of struck me was because of your actual your career, your background working in the court system and then your education being a forensic psychologist, that you were able to bring different aspects to True Crime. A lot of times I think people end up in categories because they think, oh, I probably could do well, and they don't really do a lot of research and maybe they aren't truly passionate about whatever topic they pick and it's easy to fade and start missing weeks. If you aren't passionate, your passion definitely comes through and I think that's probably why you've been able to go for well over a year now without ever missing a week and while constantly bringing new stories and new angles to stories people might have already heard before, but a totally unique perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and being so passionate about the cases and the stories that I'm talking about also keeps me motivated. Going back to talking about keeping a schedule as a full time podcaster, it's so much easier to stay motivated and to keep to a consistent schedule when you're passionate about what you're talking about. You're excited to research a case that you're going to be covering next week and you're excited to record it because you get to talk about the case again. So for me, that really helps and it helps me to bring my professional experience, my education, into the stories that I talk about. So it's very beneficial to be passionate about it.
Speaker 2:What do we have in touch? Don? That I know. As soon as you said I was going to go full time with my podcast, the thing that kind of blew up in a lot of our listeners minds was like okay, I can't do that, I have to make money. I can't just take a break from my job. And so I want to talk to you about podcast monetization, because you've started at least to my three different ways of earning money from your podcast through merchandise, Patreon and pod corn. So I'd love to walk through those with you, if that's all right.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 2:So, first off, patreon. How have you incorporated Patreon into your podcast? How has that been for you? Do you feel like that's successful?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Patreon. For me, that was the first monetization tool that I launched with Forensic Tales. I would say I had my Patreon site up within the first couple months after launching and initially, of course, you get a handful of friends and family who sign up, who want to support you. But once I started incorporating Patreon into my episodes, as well as incorporating it on my website, on my social media links, that's when the word started getting out about Patreon and it's continuing to grow.
Speaker 2:What has the experience been like being on Patreon? Have you been able to connect more closely with your audience? Could you talk maybe a bit something about different tiers and how you've set that up, because I know a lot of people would like to do a Patreon but they're kind of afraid am I going to have to create all this extra content? How do you manage that?
Speaker 1:So for me Patreon is very low maintenance, very manageable for me. Since I launched, I started my account with three different tiers. I'm only at four tiers now. I just recently added a higher one for some merchandise, but it's overall very low maintenance for me. One of the biggest aspects to my Patreon account is getting early access to episodes. So patrons of Forensic Tales will get to listen to new episodes by the Thursday before the launch on Monday. I also offer ad free options. So for some of the higher tiers on Patreon, not only do they get early access but they also get to enjoy the episodes ad free.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great and as far as extra work, I cover bonus content and again in the true crime world, there's updates to cases all the time and that's something that I do probably once a month, so it's not time consuming and it's definitely added a lot of value to the listeners.
Speaker 2:So we've got early access. We have some exclusive content. We have ad free feeds, which we need to talk about ads in a second. I think those are all really great ways. I've seen a lot of people on Patreon. What they do is they are releasing a video every week on YouTube or a podcast every week and they're going okay Patreon, so I have to do a whole nother batch of videos and podcasts are even better than types people to go on to Patreon and when I look at that I'm like man, that is that's. That's tough, because you've just doubled the amount of work you have to do and some of your best content gets kind of hidden away and no one ever finds out about it.
Speaker 2:So I love how you found sustainable ways to run a Patreon. So next let's talk about merchandise. You have a Tee Public page where you have merch for the podcast. Can you tell us how that you kind of grew into that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I've been. Tee Public has been the only vendor that I have used for merchandise, and it actually came about because listeners listeners as well as patrons, reached out and said hey, courtney, we want, we want to rep forensic tales. Where can we buy it? Where can we buy it? And initially, of course, I had some fears about, you know, creating merchandise, because you've got to worry about quality issues and you don't want to buy a ton of merchandise and have it stored in your apartment for months. So I started using Tee Public and they've been wonderful. They have wonderful customer service, the quality was great and it just provided another value to my loyal listeners who wanted to rep some merchandise.
Speaker 2:That's awesome. Have you found that to be pretty hands off? Because I know Tee Public. They manage everything people buy from them and then you get a cut of the proceeds, but then they manage all shipping returns, all that right.
Speaker 1:It's completely hands off, which, again, as a one woman podcaster, the more time that I can get back to the other things I have to get done, the better, and Tee Public handles everything. You create your storefront, which is super, super easy. You can create different logos if you want, and you get to decide what merchandise you want to sell. If you don't want to sell hoodies, you don't have to sell hoodies. If you want to sell coffee mugs, you can sell coffee mugs, and once you set that up, which is probably a couple hours, it's completely hands off. Tee Public takes care of everything.
Speaker 2:How do you promote the Tee Public page?
Speaker 1:So I kind of hinted at it in a couple episodes when I was going to be launching the storefront. So it was a teaser for a couple episodes, saying hey, forensic tells listeners, we've got some merchandise coming. I teased it on my social media site and once the storefront was live, I made a big big deal about it.
Speaker 2:It was on my website, it was in episodes in my intro, as well as all over my social so let's talk about the third piece, which is, I think, why we first got connected, and that is pod corn. How have you used then? I listened to a few of your episodes and I heard that you, working with some brands were those all through pod corn that you connected with them?
Speaker 1:Yes, so I right now I exclusively use pod corn for my sponsorships for forensic tales.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how did how's that process been and how did you first get connected with them?
Speaker 1:It's been absolutely wonderful. My experience with pod corn has just completely revolutionized the show and how I look for sponsorships. Prior to getting on pod corn, when I first had the idea of, okay, I want to start monetizing, I want to start getting sponsorships, the first question is you know where do I go? How? How do I do that? Do I have to have X amount of downloads? And with pod corn, I created a profile in 30 seconds and right there in front of me the first time I logged on was 50 sponsorships and I thought, oh my gosh, these are 50 people that I can reach out to to see if what they're offering is a good fit for my listeners or not.
Speaker 2:Were you able to get people to get to sponsor the podcast right away when you started pitching?
Speaker 1:I was. I was pretty fortunate, I believe, the first couple of days that I was on there and started sending proposals to different companies, that I received my first sponsorship within the first couple of days.
Speaker 2:And can you give us an idea of where your podcast was as first listeners when you landed your first deal? Because I know some people feel a little bit nervous that maybe their podcast isn't big enough to land a sponsorship. So could you dissuade any of those fears?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and let me let me be the one to hopefully get rid of any of those fears to any other podcasts host out there that feels like that. Your show is not big enough and you don't have an insane amount of downloads, because I certainly am not the biggest true crime fish podcast out there. So for me when I was getting my first sponsorships, as far as downloads, it would be 1500 to 2000 in the first five days or so, so not huge, huge numbers.
Speaker 2:And it's very good to hear that, because then you realize we can start the monetization earlier in the podcast life cycle, which allows us do things like hey, maybe I'm going to not take extra hours at work or maybe I will go full time with this, or you know, once we start building up some of these revenue streams, or maybe for some people it's just they want to buy a roadcaster pro and they want to be able to actually take the podcast to the next level you can do it and you can justify it when your podcast actually has become an income stream.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I also want to say that, you know, with, with popcorn it's you're not going to spend a ton, a ton of time. You know I'm trying to land these sponsorships. You know I'm it's. It's a very simplified process as long as you can, you know create, you know personalize proposals. It's not something that's time consuming.
Speaker 2:As far as looking for sponsorships, which is great, how do you determine which sponsors you want on your podcast? Are there certain criteria that you use when you're looking for them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's, that's one of the biggest things for me. When I, when I made the decision to start having sponsors on the show, I wanted them to mean something. I wanted them to to be product services or even other shows that I felt like my listeners would want to hear. I didn't want them to be, you know, something completely irrelevant and I didn't think my listeners would want. I want it to be something that they could benefit from if, whether it's a product or a service or another another show they might want to listen to. So I think that's so important. And what Podcast is great for is because I can read all about the company before I even submit a proposal and I kind of control okay, who's who someone I want to work with or not.
Speaker 2:We just did a video where I think I said something like with great trust comes great responsibility and like our podcasters, we build an incredible amount of trust with our listeners. Especially, somebody's been listening to your podcast now for over a year, listening to every episode. They do trust you and it's not. It's not just a commercial that's popping in, it's your voice. You're reading and saying, hey, I really think this is a great company. Why don't you work with them?
Speaker 2:And so it's really important for us as podcasters to go through the process of making sure we're comfortable recommending the product. You know if it's something you would never use, you definitely don't want it to be on your podcast and people can hear it. You know if it's coming through in your voice that you know you're just reading off something that you don't care about at all, that comes through and there's not gonna be a lot of sales and eventually the sponsorships move on when they realize you're not selling the product. But if you can find something that you're already passionate about, especially if it overlaps with what the podcast is about, has some connection, you know that's this just perfect area where you're able to bring everything together the listeners, the trust of the podcast what you're known for and recommend products that people will love and, hopefully, enjoy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's so important, you know, and if I could just share, like a quick success story, speaking to that very point about offering Services and products that that I think my listeners would really benefit from, there was a company that I am, I worked with through pod corn. They ran for for ads, for middle ads, and they provided me with a promo code that I could provide my listeners with. It was, you know, at 20 30% off offer. I thought, okay, that's even, that's even better. It's a product that I think they can benefit from and they can. They can save some money on it.
Speaker 1:Why was just contacted two weeks ago from from the company and they told me that they've already had three sales from my listeners that they they can track because they're using that forensic, you know promo code and he emailed me and said we've got three tracked sales. This is better than what we could have expected. Can we buy more ads from you? So that's a win. And that told that. Told me you know, as a host, that, hey, this was a product that my listeners out there they want, they want that and they got.
Speaker 1:You know, it was a kind of a win win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's definitely a win win. I think we Miss, you know, when we watch TV and you're watching like a that you're watching, maybe date line or something, and then a bunch of commercials come on the middle. They've nothing to do with the TV show, you know. They often are just random things are stuck in and it's very easy to like, tune them out or take that time to go get a drink or grab something to eat. You're going and doing other things and then you come back for the actual show. You're trying to avoid it.
Speaker 2:But when it is the host telling you, hey, here's what I love, here's a product why I like it and here's actually a code, so the actually a discount, it's a totally different experience and it's so much more engaging for the audience and I think that a lot of advertisers are getting smart and realizing the return on our investment here is so much greater because we are using the host as a spokesperson of the company rather than just getting, you know, some random actor to come on and just, like you know, kind of read something to you on a commercial. So let's talk a little bit about podcast growth. How have you been successful in growing your podcast since you went full time?
Speaker 1:Great question. So I definitely want to lead this off by saying that prior to launching and prior to to starting forensic tales, I have zero audience. I didn't have a company I. The audience for me was friends and family who you know, that was in my immediate network. So I want to be open and honest that you know I had zero audience prior to launching and so everything that I've been able to To create now has been totally out of grassroots from the beginning, and I think that's important.
Speaker 1:If anyone Thinks that you already need an audience to start a podcast, which you don't, so for me, in the beginning it, I really created a huge launch campaign leading up to the actual dropping of my first episodes. I was doing a huge launch Two months before the show was even even available for download, which started with immediate friends and family. I created an army of forensic tales, army of friends and family in the beginning and I asked them to help me promote it two months before the show had even launched. So I'm getting to my network plus their network and their network and their network. And that was really successful for me because when I launched my show and dropped the first three episodes, I had a audience, a small audience, but it was there and then, since then it's been growing the audience outside of my immediate network.
Speaker 2:One thing that stuck to me about why I thought your podcast might be successful is you have a very clear name. Forensic Tales is a very easy to understand. I know what this podcast is going to be about. A lot of podcasts really do grow by word of mouth, and so having a podcast that people enjoy and having a very clear way for people to explain what your podcast is about so they could say it's true crime, but she has a forensic lens on everything and is able to come at it from this forensic psychology angle and from your past experience in the court system, you have a lot of interesting insights into these cases that may not be on other, even more largely produced shows, and so for people to be able to say that I think is incredibly valuable. Have you found word of mouth to be an important growth channel for you?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. I would say that word of mouth is probably one of the biggest tools for growing my audience, and I think word of mouth can happen a number of different ways. Of course, people who know each other, who work together. I get emails from people saying my coworkers and I listened to your show, can you cover this case? Or people are sharing word of mouth in different Facebook groups and Reddit and different online communities where they're talking about true crime shows or they're talking about a particular case that I covered in a previous episode. So, definitely, word of mouth is huge for my growth.
Speaker 2:Have you done anything to seed those discussions, like in Facebook groups and on Reddit forums, or is that just totally hands off? Other people have taken them on themselves to promote the show.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a great question. I would say it's probably 50-50. I'm definitely as a true crime fan myself, I'm definitely involved in several different Facebook groups that are dedicated to true crime, true crime podcasts. I definitely participate in those. But then also it's a lot of hands off If I discover and I interact with one of my listeners and I say, hey, how did you find my show? And they tell me it was talked about on Reddit. I don't use Reddit, so that tells me that that interaction is happening without my involvement.
Speaker 2:How do you approach promoting your own show? So if you're in a Facebook group and people are talking about something that you think is related to your podcast, how do you do that without coming off as being kind of scammy or just like being self-promotional?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a tricky thing because as a podcast host, you never want to come across as hey, listen to my show, listen to my show. I would say that I really only do that if I feel like I'm in a discussion where people are talking about something whether that's a case or a certain aspect of a case. If I really think that my episode and my show can really bring them benefit or really contribute to what they're talking about, then I would introduce it. But it's a very kind of a careful thing to not be constantly in these groups saying download my show, download my show.
Speaker 2:To be clear these are true crime. Facebook groups. They're not podcast Facebook groups.
Speaker 1:One thing we see all the time is.
Speaker 2:In our group, we've always had to be extremely. I feel like our rules have always had to be really tough about not being self-promotional of your podcast, because we are all podcasters in the group. So we have 16,000 or 20,000 podcasters and everybody wants to tell each other about their shows. That we do that. It's just total chaos. So you're in the groups related to your subject matter and when you write these comments, are you giving more context or are you? Is it? We're not just dropping a link, right, we're giving you're giving more context around it.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, and these are definitely true crime. I'm in a handful of them on Facebook. These are true crime podcasts and they're members of listeners as well as other podcasts hosts. So when I'm chiming in, it's really about not just saying here's my subscribe button, here's the link to listen to the episode. It's really connecting with them, saying hey, you're talking about the Night Stalker and this aspect, or you're talking about a case that's just been updated in the news recently. It's about saying I covered this and this is what I had to say about it, or this is what I talked about in the episode.
Speaker 2:or I simply say hey, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:When I was researching the case. I didn't know that, so it's more of like a discussion too. It's not just constantly trying to plug my show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If we're not providing some value in the comment, then people are not going to click it. Yeah absolutely. Maybe when it was AOL in 1994, if we saw the link, we would just click it and wonder where it went. Now on the internet, we know. If I don't know what this link is going to, I'm just going to pass. I have no interest in clicking and ending up on some scammy website. Those are great best practices. Or are there other best practices that you would recommend to new podcasters, especially around growing a show?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and I would say the one biggest thing is consistency. I know I've talked about it already as far as producing a weekly episode, but also being consistent with my brand, making sure that my website they don't go to forensictalescom and it looks completely different than what they see in the directories. And making sure that I'm consistent with blog posts so every episode gets a blog post. Making sure the blog posts are consistent. My social media sites are consistent. So I would say my biggest piece of advice is to be consistent about it. What you do aligns with your brand, with your show, and I think that's really important to people. They can expect certain things out of the show.
Speaker 2:If there's somebody else out there who wants to start. So we're actually going way back. They've just been listening for a long time. Maybe they've been listening to your podcast and they're thinking all right, I've got to start a show. What recommendations would you give to that brand new podcaster?
Speaker 1:I would say number one take yourself seriously about it. You can take it seriously even if it's just a hobby. You can have a serious hobby about it and take yourself seriously with it. Know that you have a space here, you have a voice. Know that there are so many people out there that can benefit from hearing your voice and what you have to share. And once you get over that initial fear, it's about creating the brand, the image. What do you want to represent and what are some of the things that you're going to go about creating that brand, whether that's going to be on social, or whether you want a website or you don't want a website.
Speaker 2:Are there any tools Now? I You're not in your studio today, so I caught you on a day when you're outside the normal student. Is there any tools or gear that you would recommend that have been important in you launching your podcast?
Speaker 1:Yes, so. So for me this is going back to how I started the show. I was my fiance purchase Pat Flynn's power up podcasting course for me. That's how I got started, which I know Pat Flynn is involved with bus route I'm, so that's how I got started, which really helped me know which kind of microphone to buy. I'm, because even just a microphone, if you're starting a podcast, you you know Google podcast microphone or you go on Amazon, right, you're gonna get, you're gonna get a million different ones you know, from five dollars to five thousand dollars, and it's like whoa, where do I even begin?
Speaker 1:and then you get into what kind of software you're gonna use, what kind of headset you're gonna use. So for me, having a course In the beginning did help me know. Okay, I don't need to go out and spend five thousand dollars on a microphone what microphone did you end up with? I have a Sam Samson to queue.
Speaker 2:The one that yeah we love it. The Samson Q2 you is the microphone for you.
Speaker 1:I love that. Hey, that's been.
Speaker 2:I can't hold myself back from like some silly, cheesy comment, but like it's a sixty dollar microphone that sounds so much better. And I remember one of the first time savers spoke on stage about podcasting, someone said I only have ten thousand dollars to spend my recording set up. And I was like If I had ten thousand dollars to spend on a recording set up, I would put like nine thousand five hundred of that in a bank account or a stock market or something and then take that maybe a few hundred dollars. Like when you're starting out. It's not the gear, it's not the software, it's none of the tutorials, none of that is what's holding you back. It is Most often our own insecurities and our own fear that people are gonna like this.
Speaker 2:They'll think I'm just copying another show. My voice actually sounds pretty goofy. Oh, this editing is so much more difficult than I thought. What's a podcast host? I'm the podcast host. What's a bus sprout doing an apple podcast? And iTunes, what? How does connect? Like? You know what we're working through all that. That's the difficult part, you know. Don't over complicate it with thousands and thousands of dollars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, and you know what? Don't be afraid to to reach out. Reach out to the different shows that you listen to, or get involved in the bus sprout Facebook group, which I, which I absolutely use every day probably and get connected with other people doing podcasts, ask them questions, and I think a lot of other podcasts host out. There are more than willing to to help you. Well, courtney, if people want to learn more about you.
Speaker 2:where should they go?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so if you want to learn more about me, my website is forensic tales dot com. My podcast is available on every podcast platform. I'm also on Facebook at forensic tales, and also emails. You're more than welcome to email me. You can email me at Courtney at forensic tales dot com, and I would love to connect with any other podcast host or anyone thinking of starting a podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We're excited to have you on bus sprout and we hope everybody has learned a lot, especially about monetization, growing a podcast and maybe even taking it full time. Until the next time, keep podcasting.
